Dolly Parton may have been one of pop culture’s most famous faces, but details of her private life at home with husband Carl Dean have always been something of a mystery.

Dean, who died on March 3 at age 82 after nearly 60 years of marriage to the country superstar, fiercely guarded his privacy and shunned the spotlight — so much so that it was practically a shock when Parton invited journalist Alanna Nash inside their Nashville home for an interview in 1977.

Nash recounted the special visit in an essay for Variety, and reflected on her encounters with the “delightfully unusual” Dean, who popped in and out of the room as she interviewed Parton, now 79, for the May 1977 issue of Country Music magazine.

The journalist wrote that she interviewed the “Jolene” singer over two days, and that the decór in the English Tudor home she was living in temporarily included dozens of butterflies and an oil painting of Dean, whom Parton married in 1966.

The two women talked for hours — and once midnight rolled around, Dean came into the room and quipped, “Y’all growin’ roots?,” Nash recalled.

Initially, Dean was hesitant to even be around Nash, who remembered him telling Parton, “I don’t want to do no interviews” before he came into the living room to fix a fire. Once he did come in, she described him as “looking shy and uncomfortable in the presence of a stranger,” but “friendly and polite” and “ruggedly handsome.”

“With each successive visit, he was more at ease, more likable and charming,” Nash wrote. “At one point, he asked me if I’d gone to school for journalism. I told him I had, in New York City. He then, in an offhand way, began asking me about New York politicians. I wasn’t sure whether he was just making conversation, testing me, or pulling my leg, which I’d heard he liked to do.”

Nash also recalled an interview with Dean’s best friend Ronnie Shacklett, who is married to singer Brenda Lee. Shacklett described his pal as “quiet, but witty.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Carl serious. He just puts you on all the time,” Shacklett said. “Seems to me he may be playing a part, or acting out a role of some sort.”

 

Parton also spoke about her relationship with her husband to Nash, admitting he was a “real mystery person to the public.”

“That’s good, though. I mean, that’s fine with us, fine with him,” she said. “My career bein’ separate from my marriage is perfectly natural for us. We like it that way. It’s too right and too natural and too comfortable and too secure for it to ever be anything else.”

Parton announced Dean’s death on March 3, saying in a statement shared to Instagram he’d died earlier that day at age 82. Parton added he was survived by his siblings Sandra and Donnie, and would be laid to rest in a private ceremony with immediate family.

“Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years,” the singer wrote. “Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”